


All My Life

by mrs_leary (julie)



Category: Merlin (TV) RPF
Genre: Birthday Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-08 04:40:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1926939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julie/pseuds/mrs_leary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Colin indulges Richard on his birthday. One thing finally leads to another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All My Life

**Author's Note:**

> Richard is currently starring in _Krapp's Last Tape_ at the Crucible in Sheffield, where he is an associate director. As he's there on his birthday today - and as he has already said that Colin will be going to see the play - I couldn't help but wish Colin might visit Richard, as he did three years ago for Richard's 75th when Richard was directing _The Pride_. ♥ And, as I did then, I had to commit fic.
> 
> All quotes are directly quoted or adapted from the play, which was written by Samuel Beckett.
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** This flight of fancy has nothing at all to do with the actual Colin Morgan or Richard Wilson. The story is purely imaginary, and is not intended to cause offence.

♦

## Sheffield, 9 July 2014

Richard stood there in his hotel room, considering the gorgeous young man stretched naked on his bed, quiescent and yet waiting for him – and he crammed his hands into the pockets of the robe, not quite permitting himself to take the next step though he knew very well that Colin wouldn’t be there if he wasn’t willing. “How you indulge me,” Richard murmured.

Colin just grinned at him cheekily. “What’s the use o’ birthdays, if you can’t let yourself be indulged a little?”

“True.” Though Richard still didn’t move, either forward or back. “So you enjoyed the play?”

“Mostly,” Colin replied, giving the question all the mock solemnity it deserved – “Mostly I was impressed by your skills with a banana.”

Richard grinned a little despite himself, and finally took a step or two in the right direction, and then sat down on the side of the bed with a leg bent under him so he could still talk to Colin directly. “Were you, now?”

“Yes. I was wondering how exactly you rehearsed that … especially that part when you held it in your mouth … looked like you were almost deep-throating the first one.”

“I see.”

“Yes, and so I was wondering if you could show me a little something about that. Might be a skill that’ll come in handy one day for me, too. … On the stage, I mean, o’ course.”

“It might indeed,” Richard agreed, aware despite himself of a slight ache at the thought of Colin sharing the beds of other men, other lovers. Though of course he had and did and would. This was only an occasional indulgence. Richard sighed. 

“I’m liking the beard, too. Looks grand.”

“Won’t be too scratchy … ?”

“Nah, it’ll tickle,” Colin replied quite happily.

And yet even with that encouragement, Richard didn’t make a move.

“Let me get you started,” Colin suggested – and he let three heartbeats go by before intoning, “ _Gooseberries, he said._ ”

Richard cocked a brow at him. “Is that my cue?”

“Aye, it is.”

Richard ran an appreciative hand, an appreciative gaze along those long pale thighs of Colin’s. “There’s not a mark on you, though,” he complained. “Not a blemish. Certainly nothing to be explained away by picking gooseberries.”

“Never mind that.” And Colin closed his eyes. 

Richard let out another sigh, and then he took up the story. “ _It’s hopeless, you know, us being together. It’s no good going on._ ”

“ _I know,_ ” Colin easily agreed. Though he remained quite firmly just exactly where he was.

“ _Look at me,_ ” Richard asked, sounding a little too needy even in his own ears.

“ _After a few moments … after a few moments … he did._ ” And Colin was gazing at Richard again, so strangely penetrating, so unnervingly wise. 

Richard suffered a failure of courage once more. 

Still, it was easy from where Richard sat, to simply unfold and lower himself across his young friend, and he naturally gravitated towards Colin’s nethers – and once he was settled Richard nudged his nose in against the virile dark hair, then took that sweet soft scrap of Colin’s flesh into his mouth, and for good measure gentled it with his tongue. Despite him doing little more, the flesh swelled, and stiffened, and grew, and hardened. Richard had never experienced a burgeoning erection in quite such an immediate and tactile way. Eventually he let it go, and it sprang upright from his lips. He pressed a kiss to the knob peeking eagerly from its hood, and then shifted himself so that he lay with his head on Colin’s chest. He let a hand settle to rest gently over Colin’s balls and the base of his cock.

Nine heartbeats passed before Colin quietly observed, “You skipped a bit.”

Richard sighed, and mentally rewound the script, and made himself say it. “ _Let me in._ ” 

Colin didn’t react other than to immediately take up the story again. Krapp and his long-ago love were lying together in a punt on a river. “ _We drifted in among the flags and stuck. The way they went down, sighing, before the stem!_ ”

“ _I lay down across him with my face against his chest and my hand on him. We lay there without moving._ ” Richard was speaking with slow wonder now, evoking one moment and creating another. “ _But under us **all** moved … and moved us gently … up and down … and from side to side._ ”

Heartbeats fell unheeded into the hush. 

Eventually Colin said, just very quietly, “Am I going to be the thing you regret, Richard?”

Richard was silent for a while, but then he replied, “One day, when you are more my age, you will play Krapp and Lear and Scrooge and Prospero … and I already bitterly regret not being alive to see it.”

“You know what I mean, Richard.” And Colin said with a lightness that was almost lyrical, “I would love you, if you’d let me.”

Richard pushed up further, pressing his face hard against Colin’s throat while his hand firmed its hold – and he groaned an incoherent protest. 

Colin, however, was having none of it. “Richard,” he said rather briskly. “Let me in.” And he moved at last, dislodging Richard and sitting up just far enough to push the robe back off Richard’s shoulders and down and off – though Richard knew Colin meant far far more than just the physical. “Let me in,” Colin repeated wistfully.

“You mustn’t throw your youth away on _me_ , for God’s sake.”

“I could love you heart-and-soul, you know, Richard.” Colin spoke quite reasonably as he got them settled again, both naked now, lying in each other’s arms and with their heads both on Colin’s pillow. “I  _do_ love you,” he continued. “And if you wanted it to be ‘to have and to hold forsaking all others till death do us part’, well … that would be grand.”

Richard stirred restlessly. “It’s not that I don’t _want_ to, of course.”

“It’s that you won’t let me. You won’t let yourself.” Colin took his turn to sigh. “Well, never mind,” he said. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to put you on the rack on your birthday.”

Richard took that as his cue to kiss the man, and for a long poignant moment Richard did so, his imagination starting to feel its way towards what they might do together that night. These encounters were precious – and while they happened rather oftener than birthdays, they were still too rare. Richard liked to make the most of them he could.

Colin returned his kiss with such affection – not kindness, not sweetness, but such affection – that something deep within Richard finally melted in the warmth of it.

Richard pulled away, and shifted to lie back on his side of the bed. Colin followed him, though, tucking himself in against Richard’s side. “I suppose …” Richard mused, “it’s not a question of _whether_ I’ll regret, but of _what_ I’ll regret.”

“Mmm?” Colin prompted.

“Shall I regret not loving you as much as I might have? Or shall I regret taking up far too much of your young life?”

“My life is mine to do what I want with,” Colin equably argued, “thank you very much. I’m twenty-eight, Richard; I can make my own decisions. And if I could spend as much time with you as we have left to us, that would suit me well.”

“Would it?”

“Aye. Have the grace to accept that I know my own mind, Richard. I know what I want.”

Richard let out a laugh then. If there was one thing about Colin they all knew – sweet obliging considerate Colin Morgan – it was that he always knew what he wanted, and he never ever did anything that he didn’t want. Inside that kind thoughtful exterior was a will of steel.

“Colin,” Richard said.

“Yes, Richard?” Colin replied, his throaty voice indicating that he knew he had finally won this hard-fought point.

“Colin, I think I might like that after all.”

“Aye.” Colin pushed up and captured Richard’s mouth in a firm passionate kiss. “There,” he said when the kiss broke. “At last.”

“At last,” Richard agreed. He wrapped Colin up with both arms just under Colin’s, and then pushed back over on top of him so that Colin’s shoulder-blades were propped on Richard’s forearms, and that beautiful head fell back, that mouth and that throat ready to be ravished with kisses. Richard set about the task with gusto. And soon … soon they were moving together, cock rubbing against cock in a gentle haphazard way, just as if they were indeed lying together in a punt slowly being borne downstream and the river beneath buffeting them with a tenderness to match their own …

As the end approached, Colin murmured the words again, his brogue so thick at times that Richard only recognised the rhythm of the lines … “ _But under us all moved …_ ” The rapids drew near but they didn’t change course. Their pace remained half deliberate, half casual … “ _and moved us gently …_ ” Richard revelled in the simple strength of muscles and heart and blood, in the complexities of pleasure sparking between dry satin skin turning damp … “ _up and down …_ ” Colin gazing up at him with those beautiful dark blue eyes so familiar, so enigmatic … “ _and from side to side …_ ” Colin suddenly anchoring himself with hands pressed flat against the bedhead … “Richard!”

“Yes, yes, my darling …”

And Colin tumbled over the falls, his back arching and his hips bucking up hard so Richard had to hold on tight to stay the course, and Colin’s seed spreading wet between them. An incoherent vibrant cry rose from that throat, and deepened and fell away. Then Colin quietened again but lay there glowing and watching Richard peaceably, and occasionally shuddering as if the last of the pleasure was yet to come. 

What finally sent Richard off the edge after him was the newfound expression in those beautiful eyes, the sense that they were truly open to Richard for the very first time, and Richard might fall into them and into them forever and aye … And so he did. In the joyful solemnity of that moment, the pleasure poured through him and sent him soaring further down …

They lay there together afterwards, panting and pressed close, and each utterly unable to let the other go. Colin didn’t ask, as he might have, _How do you manage it, at your age?_ Nevertheless, Richard murmured the reply, “ _I’ve been saving up for you all my life._ ”

♦


End file.
